Give U.S. a little credit

March 06, 2010

"Victory has a thousand fathers," John F. Kennedy reportedly said, "but defeat is an orphan."

By that standard, George W. Bush has won the Iraq war.

Last month, Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed on CNN's "Larry King Live" that the peaceful transition to democracy and the (partial) withdrawal of U.S. forces "could be one of the great achievements of this administration."

Initially, I ignored Biden's comment because, well, he's Joe Biden. But then White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended the vice president, suggesting that it was Obama who put Iraq "back together" and worked out bringing American troops home.

Then, just this week, Newsweek, which spent years ridiculing Bush, came out with a cover story titled "Victory at Last: The Emergence of a Democratic Iraq," in which the authors grudgingly and tentatively credit Bush with creating a democratic Iraq.

The Newsweek story might indeed be premature, as recent upticks in Iraq violence demonstrate that nobody's out of the woods yet.

Still, when the Obama administration starts taking credit for success in Iraq, you know things have changed for the better. Now, of course, it is a grotesque distortion of logic and even political decency for the White House to be taking credit for victory in Iraq.

Obama wouldn't be president today if he hadn't opposed the war. His opposition is what best distinguished him from Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Obama also opposed Bush's surge, which turned Iraq around. He and Biden both claimed that it would actually make things worse.

When Gibbs went to bat for Biden, he said that Obama's achievement was "putting what was broken back together and getting our troops home, which we intend to do ..." When it was pointed out that the proposed U.S. withdrawal had been set in the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Bush administration, Gibbs claimed it was the "political pressure" of candidate Obama that made such an agreement possible.

On the merits, this is pretty pathetic stuff. The same administration that blames all of its mistakes on problems it inherited now wants to take credit for accomplishments it inherited.

Still, it's good news. First and foremost, it's a sign that the war in Iraq, while costly and deservedly controversial, was not for nothing. Putting Iraq on a path to democracy and decency is a noble accomplishment for which Americans, of all parties, should be proud.

Second, it shows that America's victories aren't Republican or Democratic victories, but American victories. The same goes for its losses.

Indeed, that's what's so interesting about the strange turn in the zeitgeist. Many of the war's most ardent opponents claimed that Americans didn't like the war for the same reasons the hard left didn't. What most Americans didn't like was that we were losing militarily and losing the precious lives of our troops.

Public attitudes are still raw when it comes to the war, and for good reason. But a generation from now, if Iraq is a stable, prosperous democracy, Americans will in all likelihood think the war was worth it, and that George W. Bush was right.

Goldberg is the National Review Online editor-at-large. Send e-mail to JonahsColumn@aol.com.